U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's
letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served
in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca
to Yerevan.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I am writing you to submit my resignation from the
Foreign Service of the United States and from my
position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens,
effective March 7. I do so with a heavy heart. The
baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to
give something back to my country. Service as a U.S.
diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand
foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats,
politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade
them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally
coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the
most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.
It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State
Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical
about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that
sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it
is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding
human nature. But until this Administration it had been
possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my
president I was also upholding the interests of the
American people and the world. I believe it no longer.
The policies we are now asked to advance are
incompatible not only with American values but also with
American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq
is driving us to squander the international legitimacy
that has been America's most potent weapon of both
offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We
have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective
web of international relationships the world has ever
known. Our current course will bring instability and
danger, not security.
The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics
and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it
is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we
have not seen such systematic distortion of
intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American
opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11
tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us
a vast international coalition to cooperate for the
first time in a systematic way against the threat of
terrorism. But rather than take credit for those
successes and build on them, this Administration has
chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool,
enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as
its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror
and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking
the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The
result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast
misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military
and to weaken the safeguards that protect American
citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11
did not do as much damage to the fabric of American
society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the
Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish,
superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction
in the name of a doomed status quo?
We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade
more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We
have over the past two years done too much to assert to
our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S.
interests override the cherished values of our partners.
Even where our aims were not in question, our
consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is
little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan
to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and
interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is
blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied
Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming
military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the
shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny
and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms
ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.
We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of
many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American
moral capital built up over a century. But our closest
allies are persuaded less that war is justified than
that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift
into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal.
Why does our President condone the swaggering and
contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this
Administration is fostering, including among its most
senior officials. Has 'oderint dum metuant' really
become our motto?
I urge you to listen to America's friends around the
world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European
anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than
the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even
when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know
that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and
they want a strong international system, with the U.S.
and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid
of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now
they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that
the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty,
security, and justice for the planet?
Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your
character and ability. You have preserved more
international credibility for us than our policy
deserves, and salvaged something positive from the
excesses of an ideological and self-serving
Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes
too far. We are straining beyond its limits an
international system we built with such toil and
treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and
shared values that sets limits on our foes far more
effectively than it ever constrained America's ability
to defend its interests.
I am resigning because I have tried and failed to
reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the
current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our
democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and
hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside
to shaping policies that better serve the security and
prosperity of the American people and the world we
share.